The Amontillado Prototype
by Mr. Cereal
Summary: The thousand injuries of Felix I had borne the best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. Set on Jachin Due, featuring a young le Creuset twoshot, COMPLETE.
1. Figment

WELCOME TO ZAFT CENTRAL CORTEX  
AUDIO LOG 060N-T5319-73D-43  
DESIGNATION: MEMO  
LOGGED BY: KOWALCZYK, A [ZAFT-031-K5246]  
NETWORK: JACHIN-DUE

//AUDIO LOG START//

…is the damn thing on? Switch it- oh. Goddamn life-support malfunction is wrecking havoc on the systems.

Ahem. Hey, Kowalczyk from Shift C here. Okay, two things. We noticed that Pod Z002 in Sector Zeta was missing from its bracket when we got there, but you didn't file a bug report. The other thing was that there were also a number of handcuffs missing from the security locker. [chuckling] Yeah, you know who you are, you kinky bastards. No reports on that either. Come on, guys. I know you guys are working on a skeleton crew. But so are we. Don't leave us picking up the poop! I filed both reports myself this time, but don't expect me to do it every shift.

Kowalczyk, out.

//AUDIO LOG TERMINATED//


	2. The Amontillado Prototype

WELCOME TO ZAFT CENTRAL CORTEX  
AUDIO LOG 068J-C5319-51P-66  
DESIGNATION: PRIVATE  
64-Mbit ENCRYPTION  
LOGGED BY: LE CREUSET, R [ZAFT-028-C5319]  
NETWORK: MARTIUS-IV

//AUDIO LOG START//

The thousand injuries of Felix I had borne the best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. Those who know so well of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. After all, one must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes the redresser.

It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

[indistinct grunt, followed by a plastic rattle and the sound of swallowing]

Felix Rasmussen was his name. One of the first-generation Coordinators, Felix had been one of the big names in business in his native Kingdom of Scandinavia until Blue Cosmos started assassinating Coordinators. He'd been one of the first to pull stakes and flee for PLANT. Vigourous and ruthless, Felix soon carved quite a nice niche for himself in PLANT.

When I first met him, Rasmussen Inc. was already one of the largest corporations in November City. We met at a corporate fundraiser a few years back, where a conglomerate was canvassing financial support to develop for resource extraction a little-known asteroid called Jachin Due. I really didn't have a taste for expensive corporate events, which, I had already learned by now, were primarily for masturbating the ego of the relevant people. But my patron at the time, a Mr. Ellsman, was there, and insisted that I go. So go I did.

Felix took an immediate liking to me. I think, to him, I reminded him of his younger days. A foolish affectation. Felix and I could not be any different. Him, a corporate fat cat, leeching on the prosperity of the PLANTs; and me, an up-and rising ensign, junior grade in the vanguard of ZAFT's burgeoning military programme. Him, possessing all the arrogance of a first-born Coordinator and not a single defective gene in his body; me- */audio garbled/*

If Felix can be considered to have a weak point –although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared- it was his almost-boyish enthusiasm for prototype technologies, especially military ones. He prided himself on his acumen in identifying which were technological dead-ends and which would carve interesting new vectors in humanity's- or Coordinators'- ever-advancing progress. One might even call it a connoisseurship. In this respect I did not differ from him materially: I was interested in the development of extraterrestrial combat, and dabbled in prototype models whenever I could. It was, I daresay, one of the qualities which drew him to me.

It was about the end of a shift cycle, during the deliriously heady days of the space arms race, when I sought out my friend. I was there participating in the conversion of Jachin Due into a military bulwark, and Felix was there on an anonymous inspection of his pet project. I had personally helped him sneak into Jachin Due with a false ID, posing as a maintenance engineer. It wasn't very difficult— with the influx of labour at the resource satellite, proper security protocols had yet to be implemented.

Felix accosted me with excessive warmth, and it soon became apparent that he had been drinking too much. The man wore the brown of the Engineer Corps. His hair was mussed-up in the perfect imitation of a workaholic engineer. The only thing that might have given him away were the slight wrinkles on his face, but with everyone bustling to go home after a long, arduous shift, no one paid an anonymous maintenance engineer and a lowly ensign much mind.

"My dear Felix," I said, lowering my voice, "you are luckily met. How remarkably well-disguised you're loking today! I have received a tip-off regarding a new form of space superiority fighter being stored in one of the Sector Zeta hangars. It's supposed to make all space superiority vehicles obsolete, even the mobile armour. But I have my doubts," I added conspiratorially.

Felix snorted skeptically. "The mobile armour is the pinnacle of space superiority combat, I'm sure of that."

"I have my doubts," I replied, "but at any rate this 'mobile suit' could _at least_ match the performance of mobile armour."

"'Mobile suit'?"

"I have my doubts."

"A 'mobile suit'?"

"And I must satisfy them."

"' Mobile suit'!" he exclaimed a third time, contemptuously.

"As you are engaged, however, I am on my way to Luchesi. If anyone can judge the suitability of the 'mobile suit' for space combat, it is he. He will tell me—"

"Luchesi cannot tell a Moebius from an XF."

"Yet some fools would have it that his tactical knowledge of space combat is a match for yours." I laughed inwardly. At this moment I knew that I had him. Luchesi was another engineer, who had on previous occasions impressed the work crew with his extensive knowledge of tactical combat in space. I knew that Felix was deeply resentful of Luchesi. Probably the only thing keeping Felix from a confrontation with Luchesi was the fear of drawing the wrong kind of attention to himself.

And, as expected, he fell for it. "Come, let us go."

"Where to, my friend?" I enquired silkily.

"To the hangar, you fool."

"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement," I protested, pointing at the datapad he was holding. "Luchesi-"

With a discreet glance around he tossed the datapad drunkenly in the air, leaving it to float in Jachin Due's almost-zero gravity. "I have no engagement. Come."

"My friend, no. As you well know the life support for Sectors Sophie through Zeta are still functioning at sub-optimal values. The hangar will be insufferably cold and damp."

"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is nothing. 'Mobile suit', indeed! You have been misled, Rau. As for Luchesi, he cannot distinguish an XF from a Moebius."

Outwardly shrugging but triumphantly laughing inside, I led him into a high-speed elevator down to Sector Turing. The cold hit us in a frigid blast when the elevator door opened. We passed a deserted assignment desk. Even with the life support malfunction, a skeleton crew had been rotated for each of the sectors. There were no crew members or technicians around on that day. They were likely in their living quarters, preparing and waiting for the shuttle to take them home to the PLANTs. No living soul would enter Sectors Sophie through Zeta until the next shift's personnel arrived in the next six hours.

As I led my friend through the dimly-lit corridors, I must confess that I shuddered at how catacomb-like the empty sectors were. Felix's gait was unsteady, and his hair trailed behind him, slick and cold as we cruised along the transport belts.

"What did you say this prototype was called again, boy?" he asked vaguely.

"It's called… the _Amontillado_." I held my breath. Would he sense something amiss in the name? I had tried not to include elements in my story that might tip Felix off as to the true nature of our little trip, but I could not resist adding that last dramatic touch.

But Felix only harrumphed. "What is that, like an animal or something? Well, whatever. Let's go."

I smiled privately to myself. This was going better than I'd dared expect.

I navigated the corridors with the ease of familiarity, but I am aware that they must no doubt appear terrifying and monotonous to the uninitiated. "The prototype?" said Felix after a while.

"It is farther on," said I, "but observe the white web-work of frost which gleams from these cavern walls."

He turned toward me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication. "Frost?" he asked, at length.

"Frost," I replied. "Are you alright, Felix my friend?" He was coughing convulsively between violent shudders. What a spoilt idiot, I thought, as I patted him on the back.

My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.

"It is nothing," he said at last.

"Come," I said, "we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, admired, beloved; you are happy, as I once was." The latter was a lie, but Felix didn't need to know that. I forged on. "You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back to PLANT and forget this dreadful undercover business; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides," I added cunningly, "there is Luchesi—"

That decided him. "Enough!" he managed to snap. "This cough is a mere nothing. It will not kill me. A Coordinator does not die of a cough." As he said this he was racked by another round of coughs.

"True, true," I replied soothingly, but despite his confidence, I began to worry that the weakling might keel over before we reached the denouement. I wanted Felix to die, yes, but as that great Natural author of Antiquity, Poe, would have said, 'a wrong is unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong'. "Nevertheless," I said to my friend, "you should use all proper precaution." I fished out from under my uniform a tumbler of strong brandy.

"Drink," I said, presenting him the brandy.

Felix raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his hair floated liberally in the almost-zero-g. "I drink," he said, "to the proliferation of Coordinators across the universe!"

"And I to your long life."

He again took my arm, and we proceeded. As we passed a blast door Felix noticed the ZAFT logo embossed on it. "Do you recall, my friend, what the ZAFT motto is?"

"What? Hmm… no, I must have forgotten," he mumbled. "Enlighten me."

"Nemo me impune lacessit." No one attacks me with impunity—a sentiment I can certainly agree on.

"Good," he said. The brandy sparkled in his eyes. I wondered if he truly understood what I just recited to him.

Our breaths were frosting in the air now, but Felix hardly seemed to notice. I paused again, and this time I seized Felix by an arm above the elbow impulsively. "The frost," I said to him, "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the walls. We are far from the manned sectors. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your cough-"

"-is nothing," he said, "let us go on. But first, another draught of the brandy." He emptied the tumbler at a breath and tossed it away. His eyes flashed with drunken light.

"We are here," I said. We had arrived at the very tip of Jachin Due's left wing, referred to as Sector Zeta. I steered the very drunk Felix into the evacuation chamber, where a number of lifepods sat waiting. There was one last thing I needed to do. It was pitch dark in the chamber, but I had been here enough times that I knew where everything was. I groped around the security locker and found what I needed.

Felix barely made a protest as I shoved him gently into one of the life pods and handcuffed his limbs to the holding bars on every side of the pod. He sat there in spread-eagled stupor and I closed the hatch door of the pod. Still no sound.

My work done, I leaned against a frost-encrusted wall with the intercom on. It didn't take long for his intoxication to wear off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry emitting from the intercom, half-obscured by static.

"Rau… the _Amontillado_!" Felix cried.

"True," I whispered into the microphone. "the _Amontillado_."

A succession of loud and shrill screams, burst suddenly from the intercom. Despite everything, I am ashamed to admit that I felt a stab of superstitious fear. But the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the asteroid, and felt satisfied. With glee, I replied to the yells of him who clamoured. I re-echoed, I aided, I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew still.

For a while there was only a sullen silence from Felix, but presently there came from the intercom a low laugh that erected the hairs of my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty recognizing as that of the noble Felix, the powerful Felix. Felix the business tycoon.

"Ha! Ha ha – he he he – a very good joke indeed… an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it-"

"The _Amontillado_!" I interjected.

"He he he he… yes, the 'mobile suit'. The _Amontillado_. But is it not getting late? We're going to miss the shuttle! Let us be gone!"

"Yes," I said, "let us be gone." I could not see him, but his cringe was almost audible.

"_For the love of God, le Creuset!"_

"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"

With that I slammed my palm onto the LAUNCH button. I let his cries echo throughout the empty corridors of Sector Zeta for another moment, savouring it, before finally killing the intercom. Felix's cries winked out. I had set the course of the pod towards the Great Debris Belt, where it is likely to remain eternally amongst the ghosts of the past, as it fittingly deserves. _In pace requiescat!_

//AUDIO LOG TERMINATED//

* * *

**A/N:** Fans of Edgar Allen Poe would have already realized that the fic is heavily-based on his story "The Cask of Amontillado". Some of the passages, especially but not limited to the ones that bookend the story, are directly lifted from Poe. So any credit should go primarily to him-- I just re-imagined his classic into space because, I was re-reading Poe again after re-watching _Gundam SEED_ that day, and somehow I kept imagining Montresor as le Creuset. He certainly seems like the kind of guy who would do something like that. At least to me. Anyways. Agree? Disagree? Leave a review, and tell me what you think. It would be much appreciated. =]


End file.
